this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this.)

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[–] hrrrngh@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

EDIT: this probably isn't him, but I'll leave it up. the real account appears to be /u/mister_cactus

Unsure where to put this or if it's even slightly relevant, but I've had some fun looking up the UH shooter guy.

I think I've found both his Reddit account and YouTube channel (it's been renamed a couple times). Kinda just wanted to see how much I could dig up for the hell of it. Big surprise that he's completely nuts

He got raked over the coals for this: https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/126vycx/why_scientists_cant_be_trusted/

https://api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/comment/?author=burntbabylon

edit: reasoning and more detailshere's my chain of reasoning to get to the youtube channel:

  • his goodreads review quotes a reddit comment
  • the reddit comment is in a small thread where the OP deleted their account
  • since the thread is small, the OP has probably seen most of the comments
  • the wayback machine shows the author as burntbabylon
  • that user linked to and defended a video from a very small youtube channel and everyone else on /r/collapse thought it was crazy
  • some of the ted kaczynski analysis videos came out right before his goodreads review

his early channel had some thumbnails made for him by 'bastizopilled', an ironic/unironic "bastizo futurist" whose does interviews in a black mask with a gun on him. he leads right into a bunch of other groypers and the guy in the screenshot I posted below. kind of wonder if that 'black mask with a gun' aesthetic influenced the clothes he brought to the shooting.

the channel names he used in 2023:

  • @NickAkritas, Nick Akritas (January)
  • @NicksEssays, Nick's Essays (January ~20th)
  • @AntiTechCabin, Anti-Tech Cabin (early March)
  • @Cabin_Club, AntiTechCabin
  • @Cabin_Club, Cabin Club (March ~18th)
  • @CabinProductions_, Cabin Productions (June)
  • @Laconian_, Laconian (September)
  • @NicholasLaconian, Laconian (November)

here's a big pile of crazy tags he wrote on one of those videos (were people still writing tags in their video descriptions in 2023?):

unabomber, kaczynski, ted kaczynski, unabomber cabin, kasinski, kazinski, industrial society and and its future, unabomber manifesto, the industrial revolution and its consequences, transhumanism, futurism, anprim, anarchoprimitivism, anarchism, leftism, liberalism, chad haag, nick akritas, gerbert johnson, hamza, anti tech collective, what did ted kaczynski believe, john doyle, hasanabi, self improvement, politics, jreg, philosophy, funny tiktok, kaczynski edit, ted kaczynski edit, zoomer, doomer, A.I. art, artifical intelligence, elon musk, AI art, return to tradition, embrace masculinity, reject modernity, reject modernity embrace masculinity, reject modernity embrace tradition, jReg, Greg Guevara, sam hyde, oversocialized, oversocialization, blackpilled, modernity, the industrial revolution, self improvement


edit again: holy shit these people all suck. assuming the youtube channel is the shooter, he's a friend-of-a-friend of this guy:

and if that's true, he'd be a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend of nick fuentes

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago

tomatopaste43:

If this isn't a troll, then it's someone in dire need of psychological help.

redhatfilm:

leaning toward the latter.

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Friends don't let friends OSINT. That said... people have found his twitter (still up), goodreads (deleted), github (still up, already full of troll github issues), linkedin (I guess deleted), an interview about has school games club (deleted), his game development studio which published one iphone game (facebook profile deleted).

His twitter account links to his linktree, but that only contains some inscrutable emoji rather than any links so hasn't really been reported:

💻🤓 - 🥷🏃‍♂️🧘‍♂️🏋️ - 📚🤓 - 🦍🧠 - 🍄🧠 - 🐄👨‍⚖️ - ☯️

(I'm sure his inevitable groupies will be puzzling over the meaning of cow judge for years to come)

The youtube page you found is less talked about, though a reddit comment on one of them said "anyone else thinking burntbabylon is Luigi?". I will point out that the rest of his online presence doesn't really paint him as "anti tech" overall, but who can say.

NYTimes also reports a steam account, facebook account, and instagram account (couldn't find any of these).

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/nyregion/uhc-suspect-video-games.html

Other NYTimes articles are now investigating his health issues (back surgery, etc)

Edit: Look on reddit.com/r/spinalfusion where they discuss his spinal fusion x-ray and mention his (suspended) reddit account's name.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

🌏💧✋🕋🗡🚀🏜☀️🌡🌶💯🚱⏳🌅🌑😡💉😱😈💀💥🌛🌙🐭💥🚶🏻〰🐛️⌛️👳🙏💥😴🛌😳💥🐛💥👊⚔👑

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 3 points 5 days ago

“and that was just the casual sunday”

[–] hrrrngh@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Friends don’t let friends OSINT

i can stop any time I want ^I^ ^swear^

The youtube page you found is less talked about, though a reddit comment on one of them said “anyone else thinking burntbabylon is Luigi?”. I will point out that the rest of his online presence doesn’t really paint him as “anti tech” overall, but who can say.

apparently there was an imposter youtube channel too I missed

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/brian-thompson-unitedhealthcare-death-investigation-12-9-24#cm4hp9zyk000m3b6nobdudr15

not sure what his official instagram is, but I saw a mention of the instagram account @nickakritas_ around the beginning of his channel (assuming it's his). didn't appear in the internet archive though.

also saw these twitter & telegram links to promote his channel, the twitter one was deleted or nuked (I use telegram to talk with friends who have it but the lack of content removal + terrible encryption means I don't touch unknown telegram links with a 10ft pole, so I have no idea what's in there):

I missed a couple videos which survived on the internet archive but I couldn't make it through 5 seconds of any of them. one of them ("How Humans Are Becoming Dumber") cites that tech priest guy Gwern Branwen and "Anti-Tech" was gone from the channel name by then. he changed the channel name a lot so maybe he veered away from it being an anti-tech channel?

edit: channel names were a little wrong, I put them in the parent comment

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Speaking of imposters, there's a screenshot of a fake manifesto substack post (since deleted) which has been linked a couple times on reddit.

The only problem is it was first published to substack over four hours after the arrest was reported according to the post's own json-ld metadata. People be trying to stir things up.

Amatuers. Can't even publish the post early and edit it later for that extra bit of plausible deniability.

I swear, kids today have no respect for the dedication and craft that go into a proper disinformation campaign. Back in my day half this metadata wasn't nearly as easy to access without viewing page source and we still put in the effort to try and confuse the four guys who knew where to look.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago

Can’t even publish the post early and edit it later for that extra bit of plausible deniability.

Fun detail from bsky, check the date https://bsky.app/profile/ieonardodavinci.bsky.social/post/3l7bs2gev6s2w

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Yeah I really really hate the fanfic manifesto and people getting deep feels about it. Such a neat little narrative that conveniently references every authentic detail people have already dug up. It's in such bad taste ugh.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

my $0.02: "allopathy" is term that i've only seen used by altmed cranks and i can guarantee some of these types will grift on it shamelessly